Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

IV. Ethics
an essential, imperfect and widely used tool in
is
across many fields.
decision-making
cost-benefit framework rests on the
The
assumption that relevant costs and
fundamental
are knowable and, crucially, quantifiable,
benefits
an extent that allows for comparing the sum
to
of each. For example, environmental
totals
assessments, pharmaceutical research and
impact
innovation projects need to know
technological
advantages and disadvantages of their work.
the
this requires comparing impacts on
Frequently
lives in the present and the future. When
human
think about policies designed to prevent climate
we
we need to know first the value of various
change,
and then the costs of the disruption
ecosystems,
these ecosystems, versus the costs of mitigating
to
change. A third step is comparing how
climate
of this mitigation work balances against the
all
costs and benefits of adapting to it. And
relative
if all that is not challenging enough, we must
as
tolerances for uncertainty into the analyses,
build
placeholders for the known and unknown
leaving
This is a deeply complex cost-benefit
unknowns.
that requires international organizations
analysis
governments to agree on things that are
and
hard to measure, and we can see why
inherently
has been so challenging for them to come to an
it
Climate change has been described as a
agreement.
fascinating example of unpredictability is
A
the site of an unmitigated nuclear
Chernobyl,
in 1986. It was expected to be a
catastrophe
for centuries but, as it turns out, the
wasteland
there is thriving. In 2015, one article
ecosystem
that “[t]he biodiversity is higher there
stated
before the accident” (Hopkin 2015), and
than
the potential for ecotourism to the
mentioned
Other estimates suggest there are seven
area.
more wolves inside the exclusion zone
times
due to the meltdown) than outside
(created
The example of Chernobyl shows how
it.
it can be to predict the complex
challenging
emergent phenomena associated with
and
impacts, and perhaps, to end on
environmental
more hopeful note, the resilience of our natural
a
logical entry point into cost-benefit analyses
A
climate change is to quantify the social
about
of emitting carbon. How is this social cost
cost
Consider the following, published on
known?
an exercise, try a cost-benefit analysis on a
As
of your choosing, using the best available
topic
analyses are frequently used and
Cost-benefit
without due concern for their limitations,
invoked
with quantitative approximations and
and
that sometimes more closely reflect
assumptions
7
IV.3 The cost-benefit analysis
Stanford University’s website in 2015.
[A] U.S. government study concluded, based on the
results of three widely used economic impact models,
that an additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted in
2015 would cause $37 worth of economic damages.
These damages are expected to take various forms,
including decreased agricultural yields, harm to
human health and lower worker productivity, all
related to climate change. But according to a new
study, published online this week in the journal
Nature Climate Change, the actual cost could be much
higher. ‘We estimate that the social cost of carbon is
not $37 per ton, as previously estimated, but $220
per ton,’ said study co-author Frances Moore, at
Stanford’s School of Earth Sciences.
(Than 2015)
Making connections
Knowledge and politics
We should note there is no confusion about the fact
of anthropogenic climate change, or the fact that it is
already disrupting lives and ecosystems. The point
is that experts, even as of January 2020, disagree
“perfect moral storm”, as we see in Chapter 8.
the numbers in one of the most important costbenet
about
analysis of our time, and disagree by a large
That margin can be lled by the opinions,
margin.
and ideologies of competing interests,
assumptions
and is one reason why a scientic discourse
has become so heavily politicized. Rening the
cost-benet analysis, using better data and
measurement, is one route to diminishing the space
available for this politicization.
information online, to see how far you get.
environments in the face of human degradation.
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